


fracture

by pyrrhic_victory



Series: dangerous sentiments [8]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Addiction, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Claustrophobia, Depression, Episode: s03e20 Improbable Cause, Episode: s03e21 The Die Is Cast, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Panic Attacks, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Secret Relationship, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:07:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22790731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhic_victory/pseuds/pyrrhic_victory
Summary: Garak's mind fractures during and after Improbable Cause/The Die is Cast, as years' worth of repressed emotion catch up to him at once.
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Series: dangerous sentiments [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1576258
Comments: 54
Kudos: 219





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this is a heavy one - all Garak's usual issues dialled up to 11! specific warnings for this chapter are the addiction, alcohol abuse and ptsd, with a brief reference to self-harm.

_Beware Flaxians bearing gifts._

The source was anonymous, though the encryption told him easily enough that it came from someone in the Order. Garak invented this particular encryption protocol. 

He deleted the message as quickly as he found it, and (after making sure Julian was still soundly asleep) went about checking the passenger manifests of all incoming ships. There were no Flaxians on the station yet, but he didn’t doubt that there soon would be. An assassin, most likely. Coming for him, most likely. But why? 

He had no shortage of enemies within the Order, but most of them had seen his exile as punishment enough, and didn’t want to risk incurring Tain’s wrath by killing him without permission. Or incurring Garak’s by trying, and failing. 

It was just as likely that the assassin was not here for him at all, but for Julian. They’d been less careful lately, especially when Julian had almost died. Nothing obvious, of course, but when all the fragments of their outwardly visible relationship were pieced together, a trained eye could still recognise what they were to each other. 

Garak looked back at Julian, dozing comfortably at the edge of his bed, thin shoulders glistening with sweat from the heat of his quarters. He’d decided long ago that if he couldn’t stop himself loving Julian, he would have to protect him from the consequences. 

So, the present scenario: an unknown assassin hired by an unknown enemy for an unknown reason, and an unknown friend willing to warn him. Garak didn’t like unknowns, especially when they pertained to him. But there was little he could do about it - when the prophesied Flaxian arrived, he couldn’t just eliminate him without raising a few eyebrows. 

Who better to investigate legitimately on the station than Odo? But he didn’t trust Odo (or anyone else) and Odo wouldn’t trust an anonymous message from Cardassia, nor did he trust Garak himself. He needed evidence. Difficult to get before the assassination has taken place, but that never stopped him in the Order and it wouldn’t stop him now.

And he did have one valuable piece of information at his disposal: Flaxian assassins are very particular in their methods. 

He dressed, left Julian a note about some urgent work in the shop and left. He wasn’t technically lying. 

***

“I don’t understand,” Julian said, watching Garak pack a bag. “I mean, I know you and Tain were close once. But he exiled you. He made it pretty clear to me that he hates you.”

He was reminded of the time they travelled to Cardassia to rescue Kira. Garak had been furious about being forced to leave the station. But this was different. His face was completely unreadable now.

“I am not undertaking this mission to rescue Tain from an untimely death, only to find out what he knows in order to prevent mine.”

“That‘s not all, though. Is it?” 

Garak just scoffed. He was tense, twitchy. He avoided eye contact. Julian carefully wrapped his arms around his waist and held on. 

“Elim.” 

“Infuriating pest,” Garak muttered. For him, that was a term of endearment. 

“Do you feel like you owe him, or something? Even after everything he’s put you through?” 

“It’s a matter of duty. I think a Starfleet officer should understand perfectly.” 

“I know that’s a big thing for Cardassians, but surely... “ 

Why would Garak go to all this trouble for a man who hated him, who sent him to live in misery for years, who Garak thought would kill Julian if he found out about their relationship? 

Julian lowered his voice. “You’re not going to kill him, are you?” 

Garak seemed more amused by that than anything, and put on the voice he used when he wanted to seem mysterious, dangerous and alluring. 

“My dear doctor, you do have a vivid imagination. Now, I really ought to be going. Constable Odo will be waiting in the runabout.” 

Garak extricated himself and slung his bag over his shoulder. 

“Wait, you haven’t said goodbye.”

The kiss felt somehow both more reserved and more painful than any they’d had before, like he was trying to hold onto every second as it floated past. 

“Please be careful.” 

Garak put on an innocent look. “I’m always careful.” 

“You blew up your own shop three days ago.” 

“Carefully. And in self-defense, you will note.” 

“Garak-” Garak kissed him so he couldn’t make a valid argument. He did that a lot when they had conversations in their quarters. “Be careful, please.”

“Really, doctor. You worry too much. Odo and I will exercise extreme caution at all times, I assure you.” 

“Mm hmm.” Julian did not believe him. “Let me walk you to the runabout, then.” 

Julian had been on the other side of this a dozen times, striking out across the quadrant or through the wormhole while Garak remained on DS9, a constant reassuring presence. There was always a risk he wouldn’t come back, but the risk he’d faced before felt like nothing compared to the dread of watching Garak walk into the runabout and leave. He’d never been here before, he’d never had to watch him go and wonder if he was going to come back. After almost a year of being with him, he could no longer depend on Garak to be nearby when he needed him. It was a horribly lonely thing. 

***

Ever since the explosion in his shop, Garak had been hearing things. One thing, specifically. A tapping sound, or- or like metal chipping away at stone. Faint enough that he didn’t notice it at first, but loud enough that once he had noticed it, he couldn’t stop hearing it. Side-effects of being knocked briefly unconscious for the dozenth time, he supposed.

He blamed that distraction for why he was slipping so awfully today. Either he was letting people get far too good at reading him (first Julian, then Odo), or his mask was cracking under the strain. He couldn’t be sure he’d even hidden his emotions properly when they walked into an office on the Romulan warbird and saw _him._

Tain tried to have him killed. 

It was one thing to exile him, but to assassinate him? At least exile gave him the comfort of knowing Tain cared enough to want him to suffer. 

It probably should have hurt that Tain wanted to erase him completely for the sake of convenience, for the secrets he surely knew Garak would never share. And to leave the job to the Romulans? Frankly, that was the worst of it. Tain didn’t even care enough to send an Order operative who knew how to get the job done. He didn’t think Garak warranted that professionalism. 

It should have hurt, but he felt it the way he felt being punched in the face when the implant still worked, beneath the flood of endorphins. Numb. 

“Garak, this is the man who put you into exile, this is the man who just two days ago tried to have you killed.” He could hear in Odo’s voice the reproach, an echo of Julian wondering how he could possibly care about what happened to Tain. They didn’t understand. They couldn’t. 

“Yes, he is. But it doesn’t matter.” It didn’t matter what was done to him, so long as he could go home. The grey emptiness in him might finally disappear. 

But being with Tain was like putting on an old suit that he wanted to fit, but didn’t quite sit right anymore. It used to be comfortable, but now felt tight, off-centre. Every word he said was being weighed and tested and analysed. Not in the way Julian did it, flirting and trying to figure out what his stories meant, but the way he’d forgotten conversation could feel: like an interrogation. 

_Do you remember when you wanted this man killed?_

_Or when you tortured that man?_

_Yes, you were very good at it. You had quite a vicious streak._

Things he’d barely thought of in years that didn’t suit the company of idealistic Starfleet doctors were now placed nonchalantly on the table for friendly discussion. It felt wrong, after all this time being able- no, being _expected_ to be soft, to be playful and kind on the station and with Julian and now he had to be cold and hard again. 

“Mila may not be around much longer. She knows a great deal about me. Too much for her own good.” 

The chill of the Romulan ship settled deep. If he wasn’t being tested before, he certainly was now. He controlled himself, controlled his expression. This was the game. He did not care for anyone, not even Mila. He was not allowed to care. 

“You don’t need to pretend, Elim. You’re fond of Mila. You don’t want her hurt, right?” 

Not a test, then. A threat. 

_See what happens if you betray me this time_. 

He’d been stupid to think of this decision as a choice he had made rather than a position he’d been put in by Tain. There was no backing out, no plot to be made here. He was well and truly under his control.

And he was really slipping, because Odo, even pacing and anxious in his not-prison cell, saw right through him. 

“You don’t want Tain to know you’re feeling guilty about what you’ve done.”

Guilt was the first emotion purged out by training. It was never allowed to take root, because if it did simply you fell apart. Everyone was out for themselves, so nothing was personal. If you got hurt, if you got killed, that was just the way the game was played. 

Only...that excuse was no longer enough. Not now he had the incessant presence of Julian in his head on one hand and Mila on the other and Tain in the middle, holding the scales. And now Odo, too. Odo couldn’t possibly understand, didn’t know half the pieces on the kotra board he was trying to keep steady, so he didn’t bother trying to convince him otherwise. He turned to go. 

“What would Dr Bashir think of all this?” Odo asked. 

Bashir. 

With his earnest, honest sentiment. Garak wasn’t meant for that kind of affection, he was meant to use people, to be used himself and hated and forgiven and tossed aside as needed, he was meant to serve Cardassia in the shadows and be in control of his emotions. It was childish of him to have grown so attached to that love in the first place. 

What did it matter that he loved Bashir? He loved Cardassia more. What did it matter that just over a year ago, it had been Tain’s device that was killing him, and it had been Julian Bashir that saved his life?

“I don’t concern myself with what Dr Bashir would think of anything,” he lied. Bashir would have to forgive him this one last thing. 

***

Anxiety clawed at him each time it occurred to him that Garak was gone and there had been no word on the runabout. He worked, he went to meetings, he sat at lunch with Miles who was a good friend but really didn’t care about literature, and didn’t know he needed to be distracted from the gaping hole in his chest where the solid certainty of Garak had grown. Was this how Garak felt every time he had to leave the station? It was awful.

He tried to puzzle out the relationship he had with Tain, and as usual, was left with more questions than answers. He was used to being able to fix problems, or at least to being able to try, but with Garak - always, with Garak - he couldn’t. There was nothing to be done except wait. 

And the anxiety turned deeper when the fleet of Romulan and Cardassian ships trundled past into the wormhole, because something bad was coming. It had been Romulans who tried to kill Garak, and there had still been no word on the runabout, but no debris either-

And then in the briefing room, Starfleet Intelligence decoded a message to Central Command from Enabran Tain. Not the retired victim of an assassination plot, but the proposed perpetrator of genocide. He controlled the Romulans, and the Romulans tried to kill Garak, so that meant Garak- 

Either he and Odo were on that fleet with Tain, or they were not. Julian liked to be optimistic. 

Odo wasn’t the only person he joined the Defiant’s unsanctioned mission to save. 

***

“A word, Garak?”

Garak glanced up from the monitor he’d been graciously allowed to peer at over a Romulan’s heavily padded shoulder. Tain’s expression was unreadable as ever as he led him back to the office he’d been granted on the Tal Shiar warbird. 

The doors hissed shut and his anxiety ramped higher the longer Tain remained silent, pacing over to the desk in that calm, unbothered way of his. It was deliberate. He knew that. He knew how Tain thought because he taught Garak to think the same way. But it still worked. It was eerily reminiscent of all the conversations they’d had in his office on Cardassia. When Tain wanted him to be worried, that was a very good reason to be worried. 

Tain clasped his hands together before him on the desk. 

“Let’s talk about Dr Bashir.” 

Ice filled his chest. He knew he was being analysed. Anything he did would betray him, whether he reacted or not, whether he denied what Tain already knew or not. That was Tain’s power. He orchestrated everything so he was in complete control. 

How could Tain possibly have known? Garak had been so careful this time. So scared. And what good had it done him?

The distant sound in his head was getting louder. Tools scraping on stone. 

“What about him? I understand he paid you a visit last year.” 

“Fascinating young man. I can see why you’ve grown so attached to him.” 

“He makes for an interesting lunch companion,” he simply said. It was always better to err on the side of caution, no matter what he thought Tain knew, or what Tain thought he knew. 

“I’m sure he does.” Tain leaned back in his chair and regarded him with a kind of impenetrable nonchalance that Garak had never quite been able to replicate. “Are you in love with him?” 

Garak went very still. Conversation was a deadly game, and there was no winning this one. He knew if he denied any attachment, Tain would have something up his sleeve to prove that he was lying. And if he admitted to anything, Tain would pretend to be surprised, as though he hadn’t manipulated the situation precisely. No matter what he said, he had lost. 

“If I was, I wouldn’t allow it to cloud my judgement,” Garak carefully said.

“Ah, of course. Your loyalties are completely undivided. Just like last time. What was her name? Palandine?”

Hearing her name after so long sent another painful shock through his body. He hated it. He hated that he was weak enough to be affected so easily by a name. And he hated that Tain knew how weak he was, and he hated how weak Tain made him feel. 

Tain withdrew a datarod from his cardigan and held it out to him. Garak had no choice but to take it.

“What’s this?”

“Proof that your _dear doctor_ can’t be trusted.” 

“What does it matter? After all, I won’t be going back to that station. Will I?” 

If he had to go back, he’d have to cut things off with Bashir regardless. Conjure up some great insult so the doctor would never talk to him again. Whatever he had to do to get Tain to believe Bashir was no longer a weakness of his. To protect him from his retribution. He already knew it would never be enough. No matter what he did, Tain wouldn’t believe he wasn’t compromised unless he killed Bashir himself. 

Tain just smiled. 

“Consider it your first lesson. Welcome back.” 

Garak twisted his fingers around the datarod. 

_Scrape, scrape, tap_ in the distance. 

He was tired of the stress already. 

***

Sitting motionless on the Defiant was torture. They were just waiting to be attacked, waiting for Miles to fix the cloaking device that Eddington had sabotaged. And while they waited, Tain got closer to the Founders’ homeworld, and their chances of rescuing Odo diminished. There had been no sign of debris from the runabout, so they assumed it had been taken by the Romulan warbird he mentioned in his final transmission, saying they were caught in a tractor beam. 

Logically, they would keep Odo alive for information, at least until the attack was over. But Garak? Julian’s idle mind could do nothing but speculate. He could talk his way into anything. Maybe even into Tain’s good graces. He had to believe he was alright. He had to. 

***

“Perhaps the Tal Shiar should take over the interrogation of the changeling,” Tain suggested. 

“No.” It came out on instinct. What was that feeling? Protectiveness? It was too strong to silence. He couldn’t be seen caring. Not with Mila’s life- 

Odo’s life-

Julian’s life- 

There were too many lives on his shoulders that he had no right to protect. He didn’t have time to care about whatever Bashir’s supposed secret was. 

“It’s alright, Garak. It’s my fault. I should have known you’d develop feelings for these people you’ve been living with for the past few years.” Tain played at being friendly, understanding, sympathetic. It covered the true derision and disappointment beneath the surface. 

_Feelings_. 

“But I just never expected that you would become friends with someone who worked for the Bajorans.” 

Another test. Tain knew about Julian. Garak couldn’t deny anything anymore, just put those feelings aside and pretend they didn’t have any control over him. He would interrogate Odo. He had no choice. 

“You don’t have to do this,” Tain lied, watching him carefully. 

“Yes, I do. And I think we both know you won’t trust me until I do.”

He would do this, and then he would go home and carry on doing it the way he always had. He would silence the discord in his head and deal with things like a professional. His life depended on it. So did Mila’s. So did Julian’s. 

But the guilt rose, sickening and paralysing, and when he saw the look of panic on Odo’s face when he realised he couldn’t change forms, he couldn’t silence it. 

“You don’t look very happy, Garak. Aren’t you enjoying yourself?” 

Odo’s words came out in gasps and snarls as he fell apart, skin peeling, shaking. It was disgusting to watch, but watch he must. Faintly, as Odo’s skin began to crack and he gave up pacing to stand, shivering, in the corner, he was aware that this changeling had done more for him without a selfish motive than Tain ever had. 

“There is no pleasure in this for me, Constable,” Garak ground out. “I assure you, I am simply doing my job.” 

“Your job? Yes, this job you’ve been waiting for, all these years of exile. And here you are, interrogating a prisoner again. It must fill you with pride,” Odo snarled. 

“Odo, just tell me what I need to know and this will end.” He didn’t know how much longer either of them could take of this. He needed something, anything. A defence satellite Odo might have spotted on the way in, a hidden warship. Anything. 

“But - but- but you don’t want it to end, do you, Garak? Isn’t this what you’ve been dreaming of? Back again, serving Cardassia?” 

This was not a one-way interrogation. Odo had always been far too perceptive, seen through him far too much for his own good. He felt sick and shaky and his head hurt from the pulsing light of the device that was torturing them both. This cell was his as much as it was Odo’s. 

And that damned noise wouldn’t go away. Metal on stone, hammering in his head. 

“That’s right. And you have information that I need, information that it is my duty to extract from you, it’s not personal.” His duty, yes, his duty. Cardassia. Tain. Mila. (Julian.) They needed this to eliminate the Founders, and the Dominion, and protect the Alpha Quadrant. Protect Cardassia. He needed this to go home and feel warm again. 

Odo was yelled in agony, collapsing, trembling, to the ground. 

“Home!” Odo burst out, “I want to go home!”

Home- Cardassia, the Order, Tain, Mila- 

Julian. 

“And you will, I promise. As soon as this is all over, I promise I will take you back to Deep Space Nine,” he was babbling, barely aware of the ludicrous promises he was making, anything to make this stop. 

“No! Not the station! Home, with my people,” Odo groaned. 

“The Founders? You want to return to the Founders? I thought you turned your back on them.”

“I did, but they’re still my people. I tried to deny it, I tried to forget, but I can’t, they’re my people, and I want to be with them in the Great Link.” 

“I knew there was something, a secret you were holding back.” 

“And now you’ve found it. I hope it’s useful.”

He leapt to his feet and turned off the device. He couldn’t look at Odo when he returned to his liquid form. It was suicide to take one’s eyes off an unchained prisoner, but he did it anyway. Because this life he’d clung to memories of in exile, this life he’d been born and trained for- he didn’t fit in it anymore. Something in him had fractured when he was exiled, and now it splintered apart, something that had once been solid that now came loose and rattled sharply at his ribs. 

He dropped into the chair, lowered his head into his hands and closed his eyes. For all his loyalty, he couldn’t do this without crumbling as surely as Odo had crumbled. For all he had believed that his feelings were irrelevant to his duty, for all he had tried to force them down he simply couldn’t. He couldn’t be cold and hard the way he was supposed to be anymore. 

That life was gone now. 

Maybe it was Julian’s fault. He’d broken him. Or fixed him, depending on one’s point of view. Or maybe he’d been like this already, and exile had just peeled away his ability to lie to himself. He had never been immune to the suffering of the people he interrogated. But at least before he’d managed to put himself back together afterwards. 

All he knew was that he couldn’t do this anymore. 

And he was trapped on a Romulan warbird with a friend he’d betrayed for a man that would kill him and Mila and Julian, about to start a war. Waves of claustrophobia washed over him, and he indulged the panic because it was easier than guilt. 

There was too much. He couldn’t find a way for all this to work, something had to break.

The ship was falling apart, smoking, burning, things crashing down around him. It was inches away from destruction. The walls were falling, he was going to be crushed-

Cardassian memory is not like human memory. It isn’t linear. Every moment exists at once beneath the surface, ready to be recalled at any time. Tzenketh came crumbling back down around him, and he couldn’t breathe right, and he knew what the scraping noise was now. 

The rescue team chipping through the rubble, trying to get him out. The noise he focused on for hours, desperately trying to breathe as the building crushed his ribs slowly but surely. 

_Scrape, scrape, tap._

Tain was still alive, but he looked half out of his mind, rambling about the old days and his age. “There was a time when nothing got past me. You remember, don’t you, Elim?”

“Yes I do, but now we have to go!” 

“Go where? Back to Mila and my quiet retirement? I don’t think so. I must be getting old. I let my pride override my instinct. Wouldn’t have played it that way in the old days. In the old days, I would have kept Lovok at arm’s length. He was too cagey, too smart.” 

“I can’t just leave you here!” 

“I always did have a soft spot for you, Garak. Another of my flaws.”

“Enabran!”

He came here to save Tain, it was his duty - what was left of it. This was his only way home. 

Everything was fracturing. 

Mila was waiting for him at home.

He was nothing without Tain. 

There was no Cardassia without Tain. 

Julian was waiting for him at home. 

Then there was a hand on his shoulder, and everything went black.

***

Two life signs in the runabout. The adrenaline of charging into the heat of battle alone in the Defiant was tempered by a small wave of relief as Miles beamed them on board. 

“Welcome back,” Miles called. Garak wouldn’t look at Julian as he stepped down. There was an awful bruise on his eye-ridge, but he was alive and present and that counted for a hell of a lot in the middle of this. 

“Oh, that looks painful,” Julian said. 

“It is, but it did save my life.” Garak glanced at Odo, and then the whole ship shuddered with the force of a new impact. Emergencies on the bridge, so he grabbed his medkit and ran. Miles went with him, with Odo and Garak behind as the Defiant soared towards a Jem’Hadar ship and destroyed it. 

A body on the ground. Still breathing, plasma burns. Fatal if left untreated. He ferried the ensign back to the sickbay and worked as best he could on a shaking ship. It eventually levelled out as the Jem’Hadar broke off, and with the ensign stabilised and sedated, he could relax long enough to look up and see Odo in the doorway, holding Garak by the arm. Garak looked absent, not quite there behind the eyes. 

“Really, Constable, I’m sure I’ll be quite alright until we get back to the station.” His protest sounded empty, and Odo ignored it. 

“Keep an eye on him, doctor.” 

Julian nodded thankfully at him. “Let’s have a look at that,” he said, nodding to the bruise by his eye as Odo left. Garak let himself be led to the bed furthest from the entrance and sat down on the edge, staring dully forward. His usual exuberance had vanished, replaced by a look which Julian had to call haunted. 

He had a concussion, which probably didn’t help. Julian repaired the tissue damage while he remained motionless, staring. Empty. He didn’t blink much at the best of times, but this was a bit alarming. 

“What happened?” Julian asked, once the silence got too heavy to bear. “I mean, we saw Tain’s message to Central Command. I know about the attack on the Founders. But- what happened to you?” 

Garak blinked and breathed in, as though woken up by a jolt. He glanced at Julian, glazed eyes tracking over his face with an expression he couldn’t read outside of some kind of unbearable pain. 

“To me? Oh, nothing of any consequence,” he eventually said, looking back at the wall but seeing something far worse beyond it. When Garak didn’t want to tell a story, even a lie- it meant things were very bad indeed. He had no other injuries besides the bruise and concussion, but those aren’t the only kinds of wounds people could get. 

“Am I going to have to get the whole story from Odo?” He asked, trying to keep his voice light. But another strange look filled Garak’s face when he said it, and his gaze lowered to the ground. 

“I’m afraid you won’t find this particular story to your taste, doctor. Perhaps it would be best if you did hear it from the Constable.”

“Why?” 

“Because you will no longer want to look at me once I have finished telling it.” 

Julian didn’t know what that meant. What had Garak done? He and Odo were both here, both alive. Julian leaned against the bed beside him, and folded his arms. 

“What did you do? I think Odo would have arrested you if it was as bad as all that.” 

“You would think so, wouldn’t you?” His voice was empty, vacant. No sign of his usual self-assurance. 

“What about Tain?” Julian asked. That roused him little, but not in a good way. A look of pain came over his face. 

“I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you mean to ask. I tried to save him.”

“But he’s gone.” There was little hope that anyone from the Cardassian-Romulan fleet was going to make it out alive. Twenty ships against one hundred and fifty. It was a slaughter on the same magnitude they’d been trying to accomplish in the first place. 

Garak breathed in sharply out of nowhere and stood up, trying to compose himself into his usual mask of calm placidity. Every few breaths he would close his eyes, wince and try again. 

“You don’t have to do that,” Julian quietly said. “There’s no-one watching.” 

There was the sleeping ensign, but his sedation was pretty heavy. But those words broke something in Garak, because he barked out a laugh, and stared up at the ceiling with what Julian realised in shock were tears in his eyes. 

“No, there isn’t. Not anymore.” 

Julian tried to touch his shoulder, careful as ever when it came to touching someone so jumpy and mistrustful.

“I’m not a child,” Garak snapped, trying to push him away. Julian raised his hands in surrender. 

Garak just shook his head, rigid, staring furiously at the wall. A wave of relief settled over Julian now. With Tain gone, the greatest danger to both of them was gone too. He didn’t understand how Garak, who was usually so distant when it came to emotions, who didn’t bother to conceal how little other people’s lives sometimes meant to him - how could he be so upset over the death of a man who had tried to kill him?

“I might get court-martialed, you know,” Julian said, to rouse some interest. 

Garak raised his brows. “Oh?” 

“The whole crew might, actually.” He leaned in to whisper loudly in Garak’s ear. “We weren’t supposed to bring the Defiant into the Gamma Quadrant.” 

“But, like the noble hero you are, you defied the rules and struck out into the unknown to save your fellow officer in the face of almost certain death.” Garak sounded melodramatic, a bit more like his usual self, but only because he was trying very hard to be. 

Julian grinned. “You wouldn’t have me any other way.”

Garak smiled faintly. It was a pale imitation of his usual mask, and if Julian could tell, that couldn't mean good things. He touched his shoulder - all the comfort it seemed Garak would accept for now - and got back to work. 

***

“Are you sure?” 

“Thank you, but yes. I would like to be alone.” 

He went back to his quarters alone to shower, to get the smell of the burning starship off him. Mila would have seen the broadcast. He sent her a brief message telling her what had happened, encrypted in a way only she would be able to decode. He didn’t know if he’d ever see her again. 

_What are you going to do now?_

Tain was gone. 

He’d never really believed he could go home just like that. But if the attack had been successful, if he’d proved himself- 

If, if, if. There was no point. If he'd proved himself there he would have failed somewhere else soon enough. 

He trod over ash and broken glass and picked up a torn, burnt bit of cloth he could no longer recognise as a piece of clothing. He’d never thought of this life as permanent. Sacrificing this particular part of it had been no great task. But now, looking around at the ruins of everything he’d created in the past three years, he almost regretted it - if only because now, he had no choice but to put it all back together. 

He scrubbed the soot off a mirror, and a figure came into view in the glass, standing in the doorway. 

“I just read the report that you wrote,” Odo said, “and I wanted to thank you.” 

His mind went blank. “Me? For what?” 

“For not mentioning my desire to return to my people.” Ah. He doubted Odo had mentioned the torture, either. 

“I consider the entire conversation as something best forgotten,” Garak tightly said. He still couldn’t hold back the guilt. There wasn’t anything else he could have done, or Tain would have known, but still. He could still hear the tools breaking through stone in the distance. 

“As do I. Quark has expressed an interest in renting this space if you’re not going to be using it.” 

“Oh?” 

“He mentioned something about an Argelian massage facility.”

“Well, unfortunately, I don’t think Commander Sisko would approve of such an interesting facility on the promenade.” 

“I tend to agree. But I do think he would approve of a tailor’s shop.” 

Odo- Odo was giving him permission. Or acceptance. Or something. The minutest nudge that said _you can stay._ He hadn’t told Sisko that Garak had set the bomb. That was as close to forgiveness as they were going to get. Perhaps Odo could see how close to the edge he was getting. He almost laughed. 

“Do you know what the sad part is, Odo? I’m a very good tailor.” 

Odo turned to go, and he looked away, thinking numbly through everything. He had been destroyed and exiled once before, with less than he had now, and he had survived. He always survived. But survival was tiring, and when he looked at the wreckage around him he saw a Romulan warbird falling apart. 

The horrible noise hadn’t gone away, always there in the backdrop when the room was silent. 

Odo turned back. “Garak...I was thinking that you and I should have breakfast together sometime.” 

“Why Constable - I thought you didn’t eat.” 

“I don’t.” And he was gone again, leaving Garak alone in the wreckage of his shop. 

_Inconvenient, this sentiment business._

Tain’s death apparently hadn’t quietened his constant commentary in Garak’s head. His subconscious hadn’t caught on yet. 

He was gone, and Cardassia with him. There was no-one powerful enough, who liked him enough, who was well-protected enough to revoke his exile, no matter what he did. He was trapped here. The warden was dead, but the prison gates were still locked. 

The Obsidian Order was gone, too. His old life lay in ruins, an ill-fitting pile of rags. There was nothing to return to, and he would be too broken to return to it if there was. With every hour the wormhole lay dormant, his hope that one of the ships might return crumbled and disintegrated. They had been so overwhelmingly outnumbered that there was no hope at all. 

There was a datarod in his pocket that promised betrayal. He took it out, looked at it for half a second and put it back. He would deal with that later.

Glass crunched underfoot. 

_Do your chores, Elim._

There was so much broken. Chaos, all around him. He couldn’t fix this alone. He barely knew what to do with the things he could move on his own. There was too much. He was alone, he had always been alone and he had to deal with this alone, but it was too much-

 _Scrape, scrape, tap-_ in his head. 

Like there had been too much before, Tain and Mila and Odo and Julian and the politics of the Order and the Tal Shiar, and whether he was good enough to go home again or whether he was broken- 

A dagger of broken glass caught his eye across the room he felt it again: the urge that kept creeping up ever since he’d discovered how good it felt. The urge to destroy some part of himself in the hope that it would pacify the raging numbness of loss.

Tain, Cardassia, his life, his future. 

He was fracturing. 

The neat boxes he kept his thoughts and emotions locked away in had been tossed out and now he was left with a whirling maelstrom of fear and loneliness and guilt and pain. Sometimes Cardassian memory is more of a curse than anything. 

_Locked in a closet, everything hurting and cold and he couldn’t breathe-_

_The warship falling apart, metal collapsing around him-_

_Odo falling apart-_

A desperate craving for the implant overcame him. He’d held back those thoughts for months but right now, he’d give anything for the comforting embrace of that warmth. 

_Tzenketh, when the walls fell and he was buried, unable to move or breathe or think-_

_His shop falling apart, the beams creaking and glass crunching-_

He left the shop. There was nothing left for him there. He needed something to make this awful feeling go away. 

_Julian, sleeping softly on top of him with a body that weighed him down like rubble-_

_Rubble, crushing him-_

_Scrape- scrape- tap- tap-_

Quark’s was stuffy and crowded, and full of the burning smell of alcohol. It filled his head, his lungs. He needed it to breathe. 

If Julian was here he’d tell him this was a bad idea. Binge drinking at a party was one thing. Binge drinking by himself in a bar was quite another, worse thing, especially considering his horrible track record. But Julian wasn’t here, and Garak certainly didn’t want him here for this. 

He settled on the top level in the corner, where he could see most of the bar moving around him without being seen himself. It was instinct by now. 

So was this. 

It was always a compromise when he needed to do this. The claustrophobia and publicity of the bar in exchange for company and kanar he could stand, or bad replicated kanar in exchange for the quiet and privacy of his quarters, where nobody could tell him to stop. 

A waiter came. He ordered. 

_Scrape, scrape, tap._

The noise was almost overwhelming. He tapped his foot impatiently while he waited for the thing that would block it out. 

He drank. 

Warmth. 

Something to focus on that wasn’t Tain or the shadowy echo of walls falling around him. 

Tain never admitted the truth. Not that Garak expected him to, but still. A lifetime spent serving a man who couldn’t take ten seconds to admit that there was a reason he gave Garak so much attention, both positive and negative. 

Mostly negative. 

He emptied the glass again and poured another. His high tolerance was inconvenient at times like these. 

Crashing walls flickered in the edges of his vision. 

_Scrape, scrape, tap_ in time with his painful heartbeat. 

The side of his face still hurt a little, in a tingling kind of way. 

Dabo wheels screeched. Echoes of an explosion, echoes of being crushed, echoes of being yelled at by a man who punished him like a father but refused to admit he had a son. 

He should have tried harder to save him. He’d never been good enough for that man, not even when it would have saved his life. 

The alcohol hit at last. It pulled him down, slowed his thoughts. He ran out soon after and ordered more. It didn’t matter how the second bottle tasted, he just wanted to string out the numbness. It went faster than the first. 

“Spill.” 

He squinted. Quark was there, and he wasn’t holding a third bottle. 

“Excuse me?” 

“Give me a little credit, Garak. People don’t sit in the corner of a bar with a face like that and a tab like this-” he waved his padd- “because everything’s fine up there. So. What’s on your mind?”

Garak sighed very heavily. Quark wasn’t afraid of him, and he wasn’t easily put off. 

“What’s on my mind is that you water down your kanar.”

“It’s a living. Shall I call for Odo now, or wait until you start disturbing my customers?”

"There isn't any need for that." 

"Alright, what about Dr Bashir?"

“Leave Bashir out of this.” Garak felt his voice rise without his consent. 

“Alright, alright.” Quark raised his hands in surrender. “But there is a ‘this’.”

“Are you cutting me off?” 

“Are you going to tell me what you’re drinking about?”

Garak rolled his eyes and made as though he was about to get up.

“ _Goodnight_ , Quark.” 

Threatening to withhold latinum was always the best way to get Quark to cooperate. 

“Alright, sit tight, I’ll get your drinks. Don’t worry your scaly head about it.”

A chorus of cheers from the lower level shot through his head like an explosion. 

_The pain in his head- the noise- the walls crashing-_

The images didn’t stop, even when Quark faded in and out of his periphery with more kanar and a sideways look. He drank gladly. It didn’t taste of much anymore. He didn’t need it to. He just needed the numbness, the way things softened at the edges. 

Knowing that Julian was safe with him now - well, as safe as a Starfleet officer could be - was a heavy relief. After everything that had happened with Palandine, after the fear and paranoia, this was as close to safe as any relationship he could ever have. 

But now, sitting in his pocket, was a datarod that apparently proved Garak couldn’t trust him. His natural curiosity burned, but the rest of him was just tired. He was so tired of being betrayed. He couldn’t know what Tain had found until he read it. He couldn’t know whether it was real or a ploy to drive him away from Julian until he read it. 

He didn’t want to think about this. 

He didn’t want to think at all. 

_Scrape- scrape- tap-_

He considered just going to bed so he could be up in the morning to work, but then remembered he’d blown up his work and it didn’t matter if he got up in the morning or not. 

He drank. And drank. And it didn’t matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you think! second half is finished and just needs to be edited, will be up in a couple of days - Alex


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julian finds the aftermath of Garak's breakdown - content warning for self-harm, drinking, vomiting, past child abuse, panic attacks, suicidal ideation......it's a lot.

“Have you spoken to Garak since yesterday?” Odo stood in the entrance to the infirmary, hands clasped behind his back, looking somewhat concerned.

“No,” Julian tersely said, putting away a new shipment of triptaceterine in the locked medicine cabinets in the back of the infirmary. “He _said_ he was going to be busy today, clearing up his shop.” 

Julian knew for a fact that he wasn’t in there, but had reluctantly let him be. When Garak wanted Julian’s company (or just his attention), he made it very clear. When he didn’t, he made that clear, too. 

“Don’t take it personally, doctor. He’s avoiding everyone. Everyone except Quark, that is.” 

Julian took a moment to realise the implications of what Odo was saying, and sighed heavily, looking out of the infirmary in the direction of the bar. He hadn’t seen Garak in there, but he wasn’t naive enough to think that meant he hadn’t been. 

“I’ll check in on him,” Julian said. 

“I think that would be wise. He returned to his quarters at about 0200 this morning. I’d be surprised if he’d left since then.”

“Thank you, Odo.” The constable tilted his head, and Julian lowered his voice. “I’m glad you’re looking out for him.”

“Hmph. Believe it or not, it was Quark who informed me. It seems even he recognises that people ought to be keeping an eye on the two of you.” 

Julian smiled faintly as Odo left the infirmary to continue his patrols. That was how Odo showed affection, though it was unclear whether Odo himself was aware of that. He told Jabara to comm him if something came up and made his way to the habitat ring. No response to ringing the doorbell, so he sighed and keyed in the emergency medical code. The doors slid open, and he was met with darkness. Garak did this sometimes when he had migraines.

_Or hangovers, I suppose._

He let his eyes adjust to the darkness for a moment before walking further in. The air was thick with the acrid smell of alcohol. 

“Elim?” 

A noise from the viewport; glass clinking against metal, then a mumble he couldn’t make out. 

Julian raised his voice. “Are you decent?”

A rustling sound. 

“No. Not at all. No. Go away.” Garak sounded awful, slurring his words with none of his usual eloquence. 

“Come on, you know me better than that. I’m not leaving you alone in God knows what kind of state.” Julian got closer as he spoke. He couldn’t see much of anything. It was too dark in there with only the light of the stars and the wall panels to illuminate the room. “Look, I’m going to turn the lights up a bit.” 

“ _No_ ,” Garak groaned. 

Julian sighed. He couldn’t help if he couldn’t see. He turned the lights up to 10%, and when he turned back he could see Garak sitting slumped on the floor, leaning into the corner between the wall and the viewport. He scanned him immediately: his blood-alcohol level was dangerously high, he was dehydrated and he had some superficial injuries hidden by his clothes. 

“Hey. Can you look at me?” Julian crouched in front of him. Garak whined and hid his face in his arms, curling into a ball in the corner. There was a bottle at his feet, almost empty. 

“Go away,” he mumbled. 

“I’m not leaving you like this. Can you stand?” 

He just whined again, sounding for all the world like a petulant child being told to go to bed early. It was frightening to see someone usually so sharp and animated huddled on the floor like that, completely out of his mind. If he’d come home at 0200 he must have passed out from however ungodly an amount he’d drunk then, woken up and gone straight back to drinking again all day long. It was a miracle he didn’t have alcohol poisoning already. 

“Elim.” Julian stroked his hair, trying to get him to look up. “Can you look at me, please?”

“Hmph.” He finally did, but his eyes were glassy and red, and he squinted at Julian like he was looking at him for the first time. “You’re doing that thing with your face.”

“What?” 

Garak pointed clumsily at his face. 

“The frowning thing. It’s very sweet. What are you frowning for?” 

“I’m _frustrated_ because you said you were fine, and what do I find when I come in here? You’re blackout drunk on the floor! You won’t talk to me, you won’t ask for help, you just shut yourself away in here and pretend nothing’s wrong when you’ve clearly been crying.” 

Any amusement disappeared. Garak scowled and tried to hide his face again, but Julian stopped him. His cheek was damp. He leaned for the bottle at his feet and Julian took it before he could grab it. 

“ _Give it back_ ,” he demanded, and tried to swipe it from Julian’s hand, without success. He was much less threatening when he was like this, but that didn’t stop him trying his most intimidating glare up at Julian as he stood up. 

“I’m not here to enable you,” Julian said, and walked over to the replicator. 

“I’d be much more….ah- much more amenable to your company if you were. Look, there’s barely anything left in there. Julian. Come now, there’s no need to be hasty. There’s barely any left, it’s a waste to get rid of it now!” His voice rose and rose and got more pleading as Julian put it back in the replicator, almost desperate. It was frightening- not because he was frightened _of_ Garak, but frightened _for_ him. 

“That’s a price I’m willing to pay to spare you permanent liver damage.” 

He heard Garak hiss something indistinct in Kardasi and ignored him. He brought back some water instead. 

“Drink.” 

Garak glared, but complied. “And you say I spoil your fun.” 

“You don’t look like you’re having fun.” 

“Appearances can be deceptive. You ought to know that by now.” 

Julian sighed and sat opposite him, leaning against the viewport ledge. He let the silence linger, hoping Garak would talk when he was ready, but he didn’t. He just sat there, focusing on holding the glass without dropping it. 

“Please, just tell me what’s wrong,” Julian urged. Garak rolled his eyes and looked out at the stars. 

“Talking about it isn’t going to make it better.” 

Frustration surged through him. 

“Neither is drinking enough to kill you, but you don’t seem to have a problem trying that every time you’re miserable.” 

“But it does!” Garak snapped, gesturing with the glass so violently that water sloshed out of the sides. “It _does_. It’s the only thing that makes it go away!” 

His voice broke and Julian worried that he was going to start crying again. He could feel his absolute desperation. He’d been relieved when Odo and Garak had beamed onto the Defiant, but now, looking at him, it was like he was losing him all over again, trapped on the wrong side of that impenetrable wall Garak put up between himself and the rest of the world. 

“Look, I know you’re in a lot of pain, and this is the easiest way out. But it’s not really fixing anything.” 

Garak scoffed. “What does it matter? There’s no way to _fix_ any of it. Not now. He knew that, that’s why he left me in the first place. That’s why he left me, that’s why he just- gave up. Because he knew he’d still win.” 

“What are you talking about? Tain? I don’t know what happened out there, but he’s dead, and you’re not. From where I’m sitting, he hasn’t won anything.” 

Garak put the glass down on the viewport ledge and trailed his finger around the rim in that focused, deliberate way people do meaningless things when they’re very intoxicated. 

“Only if you’re optimistic enough to consider living a victory.”

That was frightening, too. Garak was never so open about his mental state; he barely even admitted to feeling a little bit down once he was out of withdrawal. 

“I consider you being alive to be a victory, yes. Are you- no, you’re not alright. Stupid question. Look at me, please?” 

Tired, shadowed eyes met his in the dim light. Julian had to fight to remain calm about this, to remember his training. There was a script for this sort of thing, questions a doctor had to ask, risks he had to assess. If he and Garak weren’t together, what would he do?

“We’re going to have to talk about this properly when you’re sober, but for now I just need you to tell me if you’re-” he sighed. He didn’t want to say it, even think it. “If you’re having thoughts of hurting yourself.” 

“If you’re asking whether I’m desperately suicidal, doctor, the answer is no. A Cardassian has a duty to use his talents for the betterment of his people, not waste them because he is miserable with the way he has to live.” 

Julian didn’t point out that feeling morally obligated to live was not the same thing as not wanting to die. 

“I’m also asking whether you’ve hurt yourself already.”

Garak had scars all over his body. He broke his hand once. Julian wasn’t quite naive enough to think it was really an accident with the turbolift doors. 

Garak looked away. There was his answer. 

“Where?” 

“I’m not interested in hearing you lecture me on all my nasty little habits, _doctor_.” 

“I’m not going to lecture you. I just want to make sure you don’t get an infection from an untreated wound.” 

Julian kept his expression insistent, earnest. Sympathy irritated Garak to no end. 

He gave in. Awkwardly, reluctantly, he pulled his jacket open, avoiding Julian’s gaze as he did so, and lifted his heavy thermal underlayer. Julian winced at the sight of the shallow cuts on his stomach.

“I’m going to have to turn the lights up again to deal with this, okay?” 

Gloomy silence. 

He got up and turned up the lights at the wall panel, and returned to Garak’s side with a dermal regenerator from his medkit. He dealt with the cuts in silence, knowing whatever he said was just going to earn him another glare. They were dark compared to the pale scars he’d given himself when he was addicted to the implant in his head, and just as neat. But this was worse, somehow. 

When he was done, he sat back and Garak met his eyes awkwardly.

“I’ll...be alright in the morning,” he said, sounding resigned. “You needn’t worry. I do have a tendency for the dramatic, and I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes I take things too far.” He gestured loosely, as though severe depression was merely a decision he’d made because he thought it would be entertaining. 

“I know that. I also know that you have a tendency to pretend everything’s alright when it’s not. What I don’t know is why. You can trust me. You know I’ll help you. But you never let me in.” 

“You don’t need to be burdened with my complaining every time I lose control of myself.” 

Julian sighed. “I love you. The fact that you’re in pain isn’t a burden to me.” 

Garak stared at him, incredulous. Every time Julian said something like that it was like he was hearing it for the first time. He wondered sometimes whether Garak actually loved _him_ , or was just so unused to being treated kindly that he’d love anyone who showed basic respect for his feelings.

“Elim, please.”

He looked away, returned to circling his finger around the rim of the glass.

“I don’t know how to explain it.”

“You don’t have to be specific. Just help me understand what’s going on. Tell me something. _Anything_.”

Julian was practically begging at this point. He set his hand on Garak’s leg, folded up in front of him like a barrier, trying to get through to him. Garak swallowed painfully and looked at Julian’s hand like it was alien to him. 

“Alright.” He sighed. “Imagine...imagine there’s a noise in your head. A horrible noise, and it never, ever stops. Sometimes it’s quiet enough that you can pretend it’s not there. But sometimes it gets louder and louder until it’s deafening…”

He trailed off and his hand found its way by itself to his stomach, where he’d injured himself. He dug his fingers in and Julian grabbed his hand to stop him hurting himself again. Garak looked up like he hadn’t realised what he’d been doing, and let Julian hold his hand while he kept talking. 

“The only things that muffle the noise are toxic. So, being a reasonable, intelligent person, you try to cope without. It hurts, but you try to live with it. But after a month, a year, a decade of that noise in your head, you don’t care whether the cure is going to kill you. You just want to make it stop.” 

For a moment, all he heard was the constant hum of the station turning. Electricity in the bulkheads. 

The noise.

"When that ship exploded, when Tain died, the noise was so loud that it became unbearable. I had to make it stop. I just want it to _stop_ , Julian." He was desperate. 

“I’ll help you," Julian promised. "You know I will.” 

Garak pulled his hand back. “That’s the trouble. I know you mean well, but you don’t understand. You _can’t_ make it go away. Nothing can. There are some problems that you cannot fix.” He looked out at the stars again, at the bright spot of Cardassia that his gaze always gravitated to when he thought Julian couldn’t see. 

“I know that, but there are things we can try to make you more able to cope.” This wasn’t helping. Right now, Garak coped by destroying himself. Anything else was going to sound insufficient in comparison. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” 

Garak just hummed. It wasn’t a complete refusal, which Julian was relieved about. There was nothing he could do when Garak flat-out refused help. He still looked pained, and he wouldn’t meet Julian’s eyes. Embarrassed, maybe. 

“I love you, in case you’d forgotten. This doesn’t change that,” Julian said. 

Garak let out a long breath. “You don’t know how truly remarkable you are,” he said, looking at Julian like he was seeing him for the first time. Julian wanted to argue that not abandoning your partner in the middle of a mental breakdown should be the norm rather than the exception. 

“I’m not leaving you,” Julian said. He touched Garak’s arm, tugging him forward. With only a brief look of hesitation, Garak sunk into Julian’s arms and buried his face in his chest with a sigh. For a while he just held him close, trying to communicate with touch what Garak wouldn’t, couldn’t believe if he heard in words. 

But then he felt him tremble, felt his hands tighten on the back of his uniform, and realised a little too late that maybe there was a reason Garak was suddenly so intent on hiding his face. 

He was _crying_. 

“Hey, shh. I’ve got you.” Julian didn’t know what to do. He stayed where he was, afraid if he moved Garak might spook and lash out. 

He kept his face hidden. The sounds he made were agonising; repressed groans that he tried to swallow down, and he’d press himself closer like he thought he’d be struck for making them. 

Julian didn’t know what to do. He wanted to help but he was clueless as to how. He knew hardly anything about Cardassian minds, let alone the ways they could break. 

Even though he wasn’t sure whether Garak was talking in metaphors or not (he usually was) Julian understood. He had his own noise. He was constantly thinking, counting. Always counting. He couldn’t help it. His mind was always working. If there was nothing to do- well, there was always something to do. He always found something. A formula to rework, a book he’d memorised that he could recite back to himself. He never forgot anything he learned, and he could never switch off. 

The way Garak described it made him realise how much it sounded like hell.

And it was strange to think about, incongruous with every image he had of Garak smiling, blowing off insurmountable problems with an air of smug invulnerability. He loved that about him. 

But everything he learned about Garak made him realise the damage went deeper and deeper than he’d thought. Maybe that was why he pretended so forcefully to be untouchable; because this was what was waiting for him if he admitted how badly some things affected him. 

He stroked Garak’s hair, and he didn’t even protest that he wasn’t a child and didn’t need to be coddled. He cried himself out after a while, and wiped his face with the back of his hand. 

“I apologise. This is incredibly unbecoming.” 

“You’ve seen what I’m like first thing in the morning. A bit of a cry isn’t any worse.” 

Garak laughed a bit, still wiping at his face.

“Nonsense. You’re never more charming than when you’ve just woken up.” 

“Liar.”

Julian shifted back a bit so he could look at Garak properly. His eyes were red and his hair was out of place from where Julian had ruffled it. Julian smoothed it back for him and brushed away some of the tears still left on his face, and guided him close for a small kiss, one of comfort, not because he expected to get anything further, since Garak tasted of pure alcohol. 

However good he was at pretending and using all his elaborate words the way he would if he were sober, he was most definitely not sober. 

“I think you need to sleep this off, hm?” 

“Mm. I could be persuaded. With the right motivation.” 

“Let me guess: the right motivation is a sentient hot water bottle.” 

Garak nuzzled into his neck the way he often did when he was too tired to pretend he didn’t like to be close. 

“You know me so well,” he murmured. 

“Okay. Let’s go to bed. Come on.” Julian shifted on his heels and tried to coax him up. Finally, Garak let himself be pulled onto his feet, and stumbled immediately into Julian. “Alright, I’ve got you. Here we go.” 

It took a bit of fumbling before he managed to get Garak into bed, where he curled up on his side, staring blankly out of the viewport. 

Julian quietly picked through the mess of Garak’s quarters. He cleared away the bottles he could find, and picked up some of Garak’s clothes from the floor. When he was done, he prepared a couple of hypos he’d need in the morning, replicated some more water and turned off the lights before carefully settling on the bed next to him. 

There was no way he was going to sleep tonight. He needed to keep an eye on Garak; the levels of alcohol in his blood were almost toxic. The only reason he hadn’t taken him straight to the infirmary was because he’d despise being seen that way in public.

Garak sighed and turned over, possibly already asleep, though if he wasn’t and he didn’t want Julian to know, that wouldn’t be surprising. He curled around Julian and wrapped his arm around his waist. Julian tucked his around Garak’s shoulders and pulled him a bit closer. 

“I’ve got you,” he quietly said. “I’ve got you.” 

***

Garak woke sharply from rubble and claustrophobia, something trapping him- he shoved back, shaking, panicking.

They were slamming their tools into the rubble now, bringing it crashing down around him. 

“Elim?” 

A hand on his shoulder. He was very aware of how quickly and loudly he was breathing. 

“Hey. Are you alright?” 

Julian. It had been his arms around him. Julian squeezed his shoulder and it felt like being crushed. Garak pulled away, hunched over, trembling, trying to control himself. All he could feel was panic, heart convulsing and bile rising up his throat as the noise pounded in his ears. 

He barely made it to the bathroom before he vomited. 

He washed out his mouth in the sink to get rid of the burning feeling in his throat. Yesterday came back into focus, as did the pain that started to build behind his eyes. Julian’s hand pressed into his back, probably trying to be reassuring, but he couldn’t stand the pressure when all he could feel was rocks weighing him down.

The walls shifted and tilted, and the next thing he knew he was a shaking mess sitting on the bathroom floor. 

He didn’t remember the bathroom being this small but now Julian was in there and he couldn’t get out. Pain pulsed through his head. Panic drifted in and out alongside it. Everything was fracturing again, crashing down around him. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t pull in enough air to make the pain in his chest go away, it got stuck and he just kept gasping. 

“...you hear me? Elim?” Julian was too close. 

It was too cramped in here, the walls, the ceiling, he couldn’t breathe- 

“Elim, listen to me. Focus on me.” 

Julian was too close but he couldn’t speak to tell him, so he just stared. 

“That’s good. I think you’re having a panic attack, but I need you to tell me if this has happened before.” 

Hating himself for it, Garak nodded shakily. 

“Okay. More than once?”

Another nod. There was a time when this fear had controlled his entire life. The fear of the dark and the cold and being trapped in a tiny cramped closet, trying to think of the right words to say that Tain would accept as a suitable explanation for whatever he’d done this time. 

Tain was dead. 

The _noise_ , the chipping noise of the tools, the noise of picks and hammers on the broken rocks that buried him- 

“I need you to come back from wherever you’re going in your head and focus on my voice. Can you remember what triggered this?”

He choked and avoided Julian’s soft, earnest eyes. It was a weakness, an unbearable one he should have grown out of but hadn’t, one Tain had nurtured as a child to punish him and then tried to break him out of when it became inconvenient. 

Tain was _dead_. 

He couldn’t trust anyone with that weakness, not even Julian. Not now he knew there was something- something held on a datarod in the pocket of his jacket- that he was keeping a secret.

“A silly dream, that’s all. I’ll be fine. I just need a minute.” 

“A dream,” Julian dubiously repeated. “What sort of dream?” 

“Clearly an unpleasant one,” Garak ground out. “I just- need a minute.”

“Okay.” Julian sat back on his heels and waited for a while. 

His chest ached, he could barely get one breath in before the next staggered it and made him choke, he couldn’t think over the hammering noise that was beginning to sound like fists on a closet door. 

“What do you usually do when this happens?” Julian asked. “Is there something that helps?” 

Garak laughed. “Kanar, pain. It doesn’t matter. I doubt you’ll be writing a prescription.”

He wondered if Julian would hit him and be done with it. Maybe that would break him out of this. He picked at the scales on his neck and felt Julian watching him. 

“Is this what you meant about the noise?” The doctor gently asked. Had he told him about the noise? He didn’t remember. He had no idea how Julian had got here, actually. The past few days were a blur. All that felt real was the tiny space and the scraping of tools on stone and how much everything hurt. 

“It won’t stop.”

“Okay, let’s try something else. I still don’t understand what Legate Hakar was about in _Meditations on a Crimson Shadow.”_

“Excuse me?” 

Julian carried on as though this was a normal time to be having this conversation, though his voice was gentler than usual. 

“Well, for one thing, I didn’t like his character at all, which made it difficult to care about anything he was doing.” 

Ah. A distraction. 

_Scrape, scrape, tap._

He’d take any distraction he could get. 

“But- but Legate Hakar is the epitome of Cardassian heroism, doctor! Are you implying that if you personally dislike someone, you no longer care about their wellbeing? That isn’t very- very- ah- doctorly of you.” He wasn’t quite so proficient with Standard when his thoughts were scattering across his mind like this. 

“Not in the real world, Garak. But in books, it’s a lot harder to get invested. I mean, he has his wife killed by the Obsidian Order just for questioning the state,” Julian said. 

“And that is what makes him the perfect hero. He is willing to sacrifice everything he holds dear for the good of Cardassia.” Garak said, feeling the bitter irony in how he seemed unable to do the same. Tain could. Tain would have killed him without a second’s thought. 

But not for Cardassia. 

For his own career. 

_Scrape, scrape._

“But he barely even flinches when they execute her," Julian argued. 

Garak scoffed, and made himself more comfortable on the floor.

“By now you ought to know that a proper Cardassian would- would never allow himself to _show_ empathy for an enemy of the state. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t _care_.” 

He thought of Odo, and the torture device, and his heartrate rose again. 

He thought of the casual manner Tain greeted him when they arrived on the warbird. 

_Saves me the trouble of having to send someone else to kill you._

It occurred to him that Cardassian propriety made it very easy to hide that you loved someone. It also made it very easy to hide that you didn’t. When life revolved around implications, a single look could lie more vividly than a thousand words. 

“Did-did-didn’t you notice the way he reacted when- when he found one of Atari’s scarves in their bedroom after her execution?” he hurried on, because his chest was tightening again. 

“He burnt it, didn’t he?” Julian didn’t even have to think before he answered. 

“Exactly! And while it’s burning, he says, _‘had I not married her, this scarf may still have burned, but it would have been some other fool’s eyes irritated by the smoke_ ’.” 

Julian shook his head. “I don’t see how you can interpret that as Hakar actually mourning her. It sounds to me like he’s ticked off that he didn’t realise he was marrying a ‘traitor’.”

Confusion tapped on the edge of his anxiety. 

_Tap, tap, tap._

“ _Ticked off?_ He has accomplished something on his to-do list?” 

“What? Oh. No, it’s British slang. It means annoyed.” 

“Ah. Perhaps it would help if I reminded you that the scarf in question was made of Cardassian silk, which doesn’t produce smoke when ignited.” 

“What? So what’s with the smoke, then?” 

“What indeed? Why would Preloc have his hero deliberately set fire to an object which famously does not produce smoke when burned, and then mention the smoke?” 

“It says his eyes were irritated by the smoke. But if there’s no smoke, then his eyes are being irritated by something else?” Julian looked thoughtful as he considered it, and then a pleasing look of comprehension dawned. “Oh! Oh, absolutely not! You are not saying that this one line is supposed to imply that he’s crying. He doesn’t show any other emotion for Atari in the whole book!”

“Why, he doesn’t need to. She is his wife, after all. And in this scene, that line functions perfectly well to demonstrate his grief.” 

Did it? Or was it just a matter of Garak reading remorse where there was none? Reading a lie into the truth he had been blinded to?

_I always did have a soft spot for you, Garak. Another of my flaws._

Maybe he more willing to believe Tain cared because Tain framed his affection as a weakness. Maybe that was the whole point. 

_Tap, tap._

Julian shook his head, despairing. 

“That’s ridiculous. One single line out of five hundred pages. That’s absolutely unbelievable.”

“That’s Cardassian.” 

“ _You’re_ unbelievable.” 

“I’m _Cardassian_.” He smiled. The strong clamp around his chest had loosened somewhat. “Perhaps it was a little complex for a Federation reader to fully grasp.” 

“Now hang on! You can’t blame me for not knowing Cardassian silk doesn’t smoke! It’s not exactly a common piece of trivia, you know,” Julian pointed out.

“It’s hardly my fault that Starfleet gives its officers such an incomplete education in textiles.” 

Julian snorted. Garak smiled at him faintly. 

“Feeling better?” Julian softly asked. In truth, he felt jittery, wrung out and exhausted, like something awful had been expelled from him and he didn’t know what to put in the empty space. His heart still raced, but he felt as though he could control it now. It was the more everyday sort of anxiety he got in the turbolifts. 

“Thank you. I- no-one has ever…” 

No-one had ever talked him out of a panic attack or held him while he cried or cleaned up after one of his binges. Which led him to the question of _why?_ Why was Julian doing this when he could have someone normal and safe, someone who wasn’t broken and half out of their mind? 

Maybe that was what Tain had been trying to tell him - it was too good to be true. 

But Tain tried to kill him. Julian tried to save him. 

Tain was dead. Julian wasn’t. 

Maybe this didn't have to be a weakness. 

“Want some more water?” 

“Mm.” 

Julian disappeared and reappeared while Garak pulled himself up off the floor. His hands trembled when he took the glass. He couldn’t bear sitting hunched up again, so he walked over to the viewport. His _das’shra_ sat quietly under its heat lamp, still flowering. 

The stars. The only thing that made this feel less like a cage. 

“He tried to kill me.” 

He wasn’t sure where that thought came from, only that he had to get it out immediately. 

“He tried to _kill_ me.” 

The punch in the face that had only felt numb before now stung and oh, he was _angry_. He hadn’t realised he had enough life left in him to be this angry. The chaos his mind had been through before had itself clear of illusions and he was struck for the first time with the plain truth of Enabran Tain, and he was angry. 

“I’m sorry. I know you cared about him.”

_"When he commanded me to fight, I fought. When he commanded me to kneel, I knelt. And now he has commanded me to die, I die.”_

There was a reason he appreciated _By The Greying Dust_.

“I would have laid down my life for him, had he asked. And I did. Time after time after time. Without question, without hesitation. _For Cardassia_ ,” he bitterly said. 

It had taken him an embarrassingly long time to realise that what Tain said was for Cardassia was not for Cardassia at all. 

“I have been _so blind_.”

_Always burn your bridges behind you._

He was just another bridge to burn. What did it matter whether Tain really held a scrap of affection for him or not? It hadn’t been enough to protect him from being nobly sacrificed in Tain’s grand plan to return to the Order. It hadn’t been enough to protect Mila, in the end. 

“From the moment of my birth to the moment of his death, he was there. I have never been free of him. Not once in my life have I been able to _speak_ without the absolute certainty that Enabran Tain has heard every word I’ve said.” 

He remembered coming home from school and being beaten for things he was certain even his teachers hadn’t known he’d done. He remembered being locked in a closet and hammering on the doors until he was dragged out, silenced and thrown back in the closet for the night to teach him a lesson. 

What lesson? That the world was cold and cruel and he was useless if he couldn’t be just as cold and just as cruel, or worse? 

“He did this to me.” He pressed his palm to his chest, felt the crushing fear that still thundered through his heart. “He did this. He broke me, over and over, and he forced me to put myself back together just so he could break me again. And every time I had to remake myself he’d take a piece of me and replace it with one of his own, until there was just enough left of what I was to be useful, and just enough of what he wanted to be obedient. And I didn’t even know he was doing it.” 

Everything hurt. The deafening noise turned to rage and images flicked through his head, years’ worth of uncomfortable obedience, of desperately trying to prove himself worthy of the position he held. It was so much easier for Tain to control a service class boy he’d been kind enough to educate than a bastard son he was only willing to acknowledge when it was convenient. 

"He did this." 

He turned to Julian with vitriol burning in him and it went cold the moment he remembered that he was ranting and Julian hadn’t spoken in quite some time. He was just standing there, arms folded, listening. The look on his face was not of fear, but understanding. 

Did he know how it felt to be taken apart?

Garak had to take a moment to breathe, to clamp down his anger. 

“I apologise. I don’t know where that came from,” he carefully said. 

“Yes, you do,” Julian said. He didn’t seem afraid. “I think you’ve been angry about this for a long time, but you just didn’t know it.”

How had he let this man know him so completely? 

“I believe I’m finished now.” 

“No, you’re not,” Julian easily said, smiling a bit. 

“No. But I think we’ve both had quite enough of my melodrama for now. I...need a walk, perhaps.” 

“Looking like that?” 

He looked down at himself. Dried blood under his nails, clothes a mess. He vaguely remembered sleeping in them at some point in the morning. 

“Ah. You have a point.” 

Blood. Had he cut himself? He pressed his hand to his stomach and it didn’t hurt. He glanced up at Julian. 

Oh. 

He’d seen all of that. And he was still here. He looked tired. Of course he was tired; he’d been dealing with Garak’s mental fragility for hours already. 

“You ought to get some rest, doctor.” 

“So should you. Do you want to be alone?” 

Garak thought about lying. But he was tired and the man who’d taught him to was dead. 

“No.” 

“Then you won’t be.” 

Just like that. He had no idea what he’d done to deserve Julian. 

Garak rested his forehead against Julian’s. Duty, devotion. To Cardassia, first and always. But not Tain, not any longer. And not tonight. He found Julian's hand and formed it into a fist, to cover it with his own. Gratitude. 

“You are more than I deserve,” he murmured. “He would have taken you from me.”

Julian sighed, leaned into the touch. His hand slid under Garak’s shirt and across his stomach. He could feel the tingling numbness on his skin left behind by the dermal regenerator. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Julian said. 

“I believe you.” He made the choice to believe him. To do anything else, at least for tonight, would have destroyed him. 

_Wouldn’t have played it that way in the old days._

But the old days were gone. 

Garak wasn’t that person anymore. He was different now. He didn’t know quite how, but he had the rest of his life to figure that out. He was still exiled from Cardassia, but with most of the Obsidian Order gone he was alone, unobserved. What few members remained weren’t going to waste their time surveilling an exile on the orders of a dead old man. 

He tried to straighten out his jacket and felt the datarod in his pocket again.

Tomorrow. 

Tomorrow, he would look. But tonight, he didn’t want to be the son of Tain. He wanted to trust Julian, to love him. One did not necessarily mean the other. But he wanted both. He left the promised betrayal where it was. It would still be there in the morning. 

Julian wrapped his arms around his waist and Garak closed his eyes.

"How's the noise?"

"A little quieter, I think."

"When it gets loud again, you only have to say." 

"I know."

He appreciated that Julian now understood it was a matter of when, not if. 

"I've got some hypos I want you to take, and then I think we could both do with some proper sleep."

"I'd hate to disagree with my doctor." 

"Liar. Come on, then." 

Julian helped him remove his dirty clothes. Everything hurt, and he'd need a shower in the morning. In truth, he needed one now, but he couldn't cope with either the confinement or the effort. He accepted the hyposprays Julian administered and the headache and nausea diminished somewhat. 

When they got back into bed, Julian held him close. It didn't feel confining. It just felt warm. 

"I love you," Julian said again, like he felt like he had to keep reminding Garak, in case he forgot. As if he could. When he said it like that, it was almost impossible not to believe him.

Garak tightened his grip.

It would be nice, he thought, to live in a world where that wasn't a weakness.

In that sort of world, he could put the fractured pieces of himself back together in a shape he liked, instead of the one he was required to have in order to be useful. In that sort of world, it would be perfectly acceptable to hide his face in Julian's neck and, even knowing that tomorrow he might put that datarod into the computer and discover that his doctor was lying to him, to whisper in Kardasi, _"I love you."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you think!! this is possibly my favourite fic in the series so far. i know it ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, but the next one will be set around the next episode so it will be resolved! - alex


End file.
